Sermons

Introduction

Really, the high point of it for me is getting to gather with you this morning, saints of TBC, and to open the word together. And I'm particularly thankful in Luke 11:5-13 is where we'll be this morning. Particularly thankful that I was assigned this passage just because of the way in which it has convicted me in my own prayer life this week and propelled me to want to excel still more in this particular facet of prayer. I think any number of sermons on prayer, similar as they say to prayer, sermons on evangelism, leave us all convicted that we're not doing either enough, praying enough, evangelizing enough. But I would say that the particular angle that this text gives us on our prayer lives is one that – I don't want to say there's like a least convicting way we can feel about our lack of prayer, that we don't pray enough. But what I liked about this passage this morning that blessed me and I think will bless you is it's more about the particular way in which we pray.

So no matter how much we're praying, I think this is an Excel Still More passage to say, I want to do what this section of scripture teaches me when it comes to praying, both in the how and the why. You got the what last week with Beau. And I'm actually going to go back and reread his section, I'm not going to re-preach it, but I want to set the context again. So we'll read together, Luke 11:1-13, we'll hear the what of praying again in 2-4, and then we'll get to the how and the why today. So follow with me as I read Luke 11, we'll start back in verse 1.

"It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.' And He said to them, 'When you pray, say: "Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation."'

"Then He said to them, 'Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him"; and from inside he answers and says, "Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?'"

"The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of God endures forever." May He bless the preaching and hearing of it today.

This past Friday morning, I was enjoying time in prayer. I say that with great pause so you'll feel my godliness. It was before our house gets buzzing with five kids under the age of 12 (12, 10, 9, twins who are 5). So by 7:00 a.m., quiet time is anything but quiet. And our twins Mac and Davey are bugging me to read them from John Owen's Mortification of Sin. Just a really great group. I mean, you could see how they follow in their dad's – no. It's more like the magnification and multiplication of sin with twins, that's what I'm reading. But they often bring to me, as has been the tradition over the last 12 years, we're a rhyming family; we like some Dr. Seuss. And so he's a deep read in his own right. If you don't know what to do in your life right now with God's will, Oh, the Places You'll Go, it'll solve it for you immediately. If you're in a period of waiting, that one page alone will make you stop waiting and just do something.

But probably one of the faves over the last 12 years in the toddler education is Green Eggs and Ham. Little known fact on Ted Geisel's most popular book, Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham, little known fact is it actually began with a bet between Dr. Seuss and his publisher, who bet him $50.00 he couldn't write another smash hit only using 50 words or less. Well, Seuss wins the bet, and we're the richer as parents because of those 50 simple words; 49 of them are one syllable, by the way. I would know this, I've read it a lot in 12 years. I'm the richer because I can read that book half asleep and the toddlers don't know any difference. You just mumble a bunch of words as dad. So it's a go-to read when I'm tired in the morning.

But the reason I bring it up is not for the story outside. It's the content inside because of the salesman who we don't get his name. We just know the name Sam-I-Am. But I don't know if you've ever gone back and counted how many times the salesman persists, and Sam-I-Am turns him down. Anybody? Any guesses? Twenty? Sixty-nine times in the book he tries to get him to eat green eggs and ham, and it's only on the seventieth time Sam-I-Am agrees.

And I bring that out not just to encourage the young salesman in the room, "Keep trying, brother, the big deal is one call away." But actually, it was on my mind reading Dr. Seuss to my kids on Friday as I was thinking of what can I say is an introduction. Lo and behold, persistence, because it really is – it's the sense we get of this ridiculous story, which is like a Dr. Seuss book. This story I just read, this parable in 5-8 is comical in its own way. I would argue that when you read it and really think about how Jesus is telling this story, that when preachers say things like, "Oh, Jesus was – you know, because He's Jesus, He's the best in everything. He was probably the funniest, best hang ever," and yet, we actually don't see that directly anywhere in the Scriptures in the life of Jesus. But I think when you read this tale right here, you can't help but laugh in the way He's telling the story, particularly in verse 7. It's meant to have a certain feel of "that is ridiculous."

But it's much more than a ridiculous story. This whole section going all the way down to 13 is a masterclass on the sovereignty of God in prayer, the nature of God as our Father, the doctrine of our adoption. And I would say then from these wonderful truths about God will motivate us to persist in prayer as Jesus was wanting His disciples to learn. So as we jump in, I just want to take a quick look back to Beau's passage because of this. I was looking at verse 5 where we're going to start.

"Then He said," – and it could also be translated, "And then." And that conjunction is conveying sequential action. And when we know something and you know something because you've been studying Luke's account now for how long? When Luke starts in Luke 1:1-4, and he says, "Listen, when I wrote this gospel, I was taking eyewitness accounts. I wanted exact truths. I got down to the details." And that's why we get some detail here that Matthew, though, has the similar Lord's Prayer, doesn't have this parable, doesn't have this story. And yet from Luke's account, we know that at some point in Jesus' teaching ministry, right after what you heard last week in 2-4, there was a time he told more about prayer; and that's what you see in just that little phrase, "Then," or, "And then."

And here's the link that, after I was carefully investigating this week, the link is this, as we want to propel ourselves into more persistent prayer this week, that the link between the priorities of our prayers that drive our passion to persist in prayer is God's priorities in 2-4. I didn't want to jump this week into this text without looking back and showing you that if priorities in your prayer life reflect the pattern of prayer in 2-4 from last week, if those are your priorities that you just heard preached last week, and hopefully have been taking some time this week and letting them get to your heart, if those become your priorities, that pattern Jesus gives, that will propel you to be a persistent praying disciple.

As I was looking at this week, I was I was saying to myself, "Yeah, persistence is cool." And I think in life we can all see how somebody who persists in something, who doesn't give up easy, will get somewhere. But it's always the somewhere, isn't it? It's the telos. It's the end goal of persistence. We don't persist just to be persistent. That person is the Greek word for "annoying," somebody who just persists and they have no end game in mind.

We persist to an end. We see some goal we want to reach. That's just true in life. And those who don't give up and don't quit and don't throw in the towel and get up back off the mat, they end up getting somewhere and achieving something. But as I was thinking about the text this week, I was saying, "Look, what is it that gets you up off the mat to keep praying?" It's not persistence for its own sake, it's for the priorities that you just heard last week in 2-4.

So I couldn't go into this week's sermon without saying let's look back and just remember in 2-4 what's going to propel you to pray persistently as a disciple is that God's name be exalted, and God's kingdom be expanded, and God's saints be equipped. That's what you learned last week. "Hallowed be Your name," that's the exaltation of the name of God. And when that's foremost – and I'm just saying this. This is why I'm thankful I was given this text – thank you, brothers – because it got me back to, like, "Adam, if you haven't been persisting in certain things, praying in your own life and life of your church, people you're discipling, have you forgotten it's God's name that matters more than anybody else's no matter how important and special they are to you, no matter how important your church is to you? It's God's kingdom you're trying to build, not yours."

And so God's name being exalted and God's kingdom being expanded, and then, "Forgive us our sins. Lead us not in temptation. Give us daily bread." That's just God's saints being equipped. And when those are your priorities in prayer and they become your passions, you will persist. And then persistence isn't persistence for its own sake, it's for the sake of something much bigger than yourself. Drives you to your knees day and night in prayer. So that was the momentum, now let's get into our text.

The Parable of Persistence

I'll title this week's sermon, "The Persistent Prayers of a Passionate Disciple." This is, as I said before, the "how." I just recapped the "what" of prayer, and now the "how." Comes in 5-8, the parable of persistence.

Verse 5, "And then He said to them, 'Suppose one of you has a friend.'" And note right away, "Suppose one of you," it's an interesting start because it's not often in Jesus' parables that He brings you into the story directly like that, as in He wants you to put yourself in the story. Oftentimes you read through the parables in Matthew 13. You read about kingdoms and the kingdom of God, and you read about farmers and fields and sowing, but He doesn't say, "You're the farmer," He just says, "A farmer." So you can, kind of like, appreciate those parables by an outside looking in. But now you're inside the story right away. And I think that's what makes this fun, comical even. He puts you in the story. You have the friend who's coming to you on behalf of another. You're in it. So He's pulling you into this story. And that's what a good teacher does. He pulls you in. He says, "Suppose one of you." You're in it. He's saying, "Could you see yourself doing this?" And so put yourself in this story, verse 5.

You have two friends. "Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine.'" Do you see? You have two friends. You have a hungry friend, and you have a sleepy friend, and you are the caught in the middle friend. You don't want to let either of them down. As they might say, "You're on the horns of a dilemma in this story."

"You have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, 'Friend, I need three pieces of bread,' because a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him." And that's the big issue. It's not that you're hungry from a long journey, and it's not that you're tired and afraid to wake somebody else up. It's just that you have friends, and you have – and this is the key to the parable of persistence to start – you have inadequacy.

Let that be a starting point on a sermon on persistence. Among all the other things that we want to pray for and persist in prayer for – and they're legitimate things, especially when God's priorities are your passions: exalting His name, expanding His kingdom, equipping the saints, okay? But this parable puts you right in the middle of your own problem of inadequacy. You don't have as much as you think you have.

A few of you grunted or amened or something to that. But it's true, right? Sometimes we just, no matter how much we have – and we have so much. I mean, we just sang it in the last song. Did we not? We just sang it. We need to abide in Christ, John 15:5, because apart from Him, what can we do? Nothing. We are nothing. We have nothing if we don't abide in Him. And really, that's the position, this person. You are in the story with two friends. You are the inadequate one.

Context in a situation like this: in Palestine in Jesus' time, hospitality was king, and it was a big no-no to know that a friend was coming to see you and you wouldn't be able to have everything you would want to give them. And so you're going to this friend because you really want to be hospitable to the friend who has come to you from this journey. And don't get caught up on like, "Okay, it's nighttime," I mean, other than they would say, "Okay, if it's hot over in the desert in the time of Palestine and when Jesus is telling this, people travel at night and is that" – I don't know. I mean, that's all significant in understanding context of hospitality in that day. But when it just comes down to the point of this story is you have this needy friend who's hungry and you have this other friend who just wants to sleep and you leave him alone, and he doesn't want you to wake up the whole house.

And maybe some of you have, like, Bible programs or Bible encyclopedias, you can look and say, "Well, why is it so hard for this other friend to get up and get some bread?" Well, because in that time period, you mostly have a one-bedroom house. You might have an elevated – as they've excavated some of these places from Jesus' time. You might have an elevated area where everybody slept together on a mat. It could be just one floor, or how this room is up here would be away from down where some of the animals might walk in when the doors open during the day and mom's cooking and the kids are playing, and up here might be where instruction happens, and then at night a mat is laid out and you sleep up here.

I'm just saying that to describe the scenario either, you know, maybe you're up here sleeping on this upper area and there's a window, and it could be even that this friend is outside the window, "Psst, I've got a problem," because otherwise the friend is talking to you through the door, which is also probably already waking everybody else up. It's a big thick, wooden door. So I picture maybe, "Psst," through the window because he says, "Don't bother me. The door has been shut and my children and I are in bed and I can't get up and give you anything."

I walked in here this morning, see Kent, and the first thing I asked him is, "Are my clothes on correctly?" because I got dressed in the dark. I came down with three of my older kids; and in a hotel room, two beds. And one of my younger kids who came is sleeping soundly when my alarm – it was the rumbly alarm, you just put it on your pillow and it rumbles your head so you don't wake anybody up. And so by the time I woke up, dressing and all that, I did it in the dark for this very reason, I didn't want to wake anybody else up.

So that's the sense this other friend has, like, "Leave me alone. I don't want to inconvenience anybody else. Don't bother me." "The kitchen's closed," as my mom used to say. It didn't deter us. Kids are down, don't wake them up, and you're in your jammies, whisper-yelling in a window.

Now if the story ended in verse 7, "I cannot get up and give you anything," if the story ended there, we would understand, right, because people got problems, and we've got to have boundaries, right? I mean, pop culture, pop psychology, you need boundaries in life. You just can't let people always pulling you down.

So, we would understand if the story ends in verse 7 from just a human standpoint, but it doesn't there, and this is where the ridiculous nature of it kicks in. When verse 8 happens, "I tell you though." Here's the kicker Jesus says to them: "Even though he won't get up and give him anything because he is his friend," I find humor in that because now you see that the reason things are going to go your way in this story is not because friendship is thicker than water. We would think the only reason maybe finally this guy relents is because, like, "Man, you're my friend and, yeah, I guess I'll just give in and do it." And no, He actually says it's not that reason, it's because of his persistence the friend will get up and give him as much as he needs. There is the ending because of persistence. Another translation in your Bible might say "impudence," "importunity," or I like this one, "shameless audacity."

Now we get the audacity part. I think it's the shameless part in persistence in prayer that connects to me back to my inadequacy. If I just think about persisting in anything and asking of somebody of something over and over and over and over again, there is a shame to that. You just feel like, "I'm going to this well one too many times." But He's saying in this story, "Because of your shameless audacity, boldness, importunity," – that's a word that's fallen out of fashion. Sounds like opportunity. What's the difference between importunity and opportunity? Opportunity knocks, importunity knocks down the door. That's the difference between the two. It's going to knock the door down.

And this ridiculous account, this audacious account of this insistent and persistent friend isn't what we would have expected, at least in how Jesus resolves it. It's not that, "You know what? He's such a good friend to you, and you're such a good friend to him, quid pro quo, he does this, you do that." He says, "No, that has nothing to do with it. It's because the friend," verse 8, "is persistent. That's why."

And I think we can all connect to that relationally to some degree. We do things for people because of a relationship, because of friendship. And yet, even sometimes, past the friendship, you just know, "If I don't give in to this person's request to me, I know them enough to know they won't quit. So I'm no longer doing this for you, friend, because you're my friend. I just know you well enough, and you're annoying enough, and persistent enough, and we're talking through the window now for 30 minutes. You know what? Fine, I'll get you the bread because you're not giving up." You have friends like this, I'm sure. You might be that friend.

I don't know if there's a bigger lesson in raising kids to this point in my life because I've only gotten to age 12 with these kids, is the persistence of children. And I love kids, by the way. Five, I'm in. I love them and do things for them because they're my kids, but I also give up because of their persistence; yesterday, even. See, none of them – they're all coming to second service, so I can talk about them as much as I want. You'll not meet them. If they were here, I'd have to rein this in. I told Kent so many of this just goes back to life right now.

My one kid, he will not... Yesterday – we get to the hotel Friday, we do some fun stuff, we go eat it at In-N-Out and not Whataburger because if a person asks for bread, you don't give them a stone. I was in Cali for ten years, love In-N-Out. It was interesting, though. It was not busy like it always is busy out there. Whataburger, on the other hand, is. You guys love your Whataburger.

Hickory, rumors – we're a small town – rumors fly. And one is that where this now defunct PDQ was, a Whataburger is going in. I don't know. If any of you know the Whataburger owners, you can clear that up for me today. But we go to In-N-Out Friday night, we're having a good time late at night. We go to the hotel, we stay up and watch basketball, and my persistent, oldest son – I just wanted to get a little bit of sleep, and I hear (knocking) because he's in the room next door, the adjoining one, at, like. 6:00 a.m. yesterday morning, because he wants to get up and go run. He's fascinated with running and working out now, and he wants to work out, and then he wants to go eat breakfast. And I'm like, "No, I want to pray, son, I'm so godly."

So I'm like, "Here, you're old enough. Go down by yourself and come back, you can handle it." And then, like, the rest of the morning, I'm like, "Hey, I want to look over my notes, I need a few hours. You guys can have some fun in your room, you know, here's candy." And this kid, just every 20 minutes (knocking), something else, something else. And I'm just saying like, "What do you need? Can you see, if you just leave me alone for an hour, then we can do everything else today." And he's like – and this was, end quote, 12-year-old son, "Dad, I haven't bothered you for, like, ten minutes." So that's the parable of persistence.

The Payoff of Persistence

Verses 9 and 10, here's the payoff; here's the point; here's the principle Jesus is driving home. The story is told, the unexpected ending in verse 8, "You'll get what you want because you persist." But here's the principle behind it: it's the payoff. "So I say to you, you've heard the story, now I say to you." You're this hopeless host, this breadless buddy, this desperate friend; and now here's the divine fiat: "Be like the guy in the story, you go ask, seek and knock. You go do it. If this is how it works, you go do it; that's the payoff."

Jesus is teaching them on prayer. He's modeled prayer to them. In fact, verse 1 of this chapter started with this. He wants them to go and do it because He's both the example and the exhorter. Verse 1, "It happened while Jesus was praying in a certain place," this whole thing comes about, this whole story starts.

And may I just pause here and say, for our disciple-making, may we be the same, that we would be like Christ and that we can model it and mandate it as we make disciples. This convicted me this week, not just in general, be in a good example and in what you teach as well. But specifically in prayer, I had to ask myself, "Adam, when's the last time you've discipled someone in how to pray, both in how you do it and when they see you do it, and what you teach about it?"

And maybe that's a good question to ask yourself this morning, as you make disciples. We're good at making disciples and getting into the word and teaching it, but just saying, maybe if you're discipling a new Christian, do they really know how to pray yet? I mean, you could teach them about the Lord's Prayer, but consistent time in praying with the people you disciple is huge.

A homework assignment for you this week, this was encouraging to me, was the gospel of Luke has a particular emphasis on Jesus' prayer life. You've probably noticed it already all the way up to chapter 11. Just to get myself up to speed, I went back this week and just did a study on all the times in Luke prayer is mentioned: pray, praying, prayed, prayer. And I'm not going to tell you about it other than to say, if you're looking for a good homework assignment this week in your quiet time, make it devotional. Start back at the beginning of the book of Luke, and I will give you this little clue. Most of it, 75 percent of the times you're going to see Jesus praying or teaching on prayer is prior to chapter 11. There's a few down towards the end in the 20s, 20-24. But I would just say, if you're looking to kind of really kickstart your prayer life and you want to start it by looking at the greatest example of it, both in the way He taught it and the way it was caught by how He did it, do a little devotional study in your quiet time this morning on the life of Christ in prayer. All right, end of commercial.

He tells the disciples, "So, ask, seek, knock." Is there something to this triad of commands? Is He just throwing those three words out? How do they relate? In the context, I would probably say this is meant to just be a literary device to be all-encompassing, as in persist in prayer in every way you can possibly think of, asking and seeking and knocking.

It may be – some commentators take this view – it may be progressive as in, like, you start by asking, and then you're seeking, so you're a little more aggressive, and now you're knocking, you know, "I'm not going to quit." It could be that. I would say at the very least, you could just say, "He's just giving you three ways to think about persisting in prayer in every way you can persist: ask and seek and knock and don't take no for an answer, because the progression of your persistence will lead to God's provision of grace."

And then verse 10 becomes the hinge of this whole passage on which it turns: "Because for everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened." Why do I say this is the hinge verse of this section on persistence in prayer? Well, it's because it goes from a focus on you and what you're doing to God's response. You learn something about yourself in persisting already. And He wanted the disciples to learn back in 5-8 and into the payoff in 9. He wanted you to be in the shoes of a friend who just knows what it's like to persist beyond the bounds of relationship.

But now verse 10, He says, "Here's the hinge. The hinge is I'm going to tell you something about God now. I'm going to teach you something about His character and His nature," and He does that by saying, "Because everyone who asks, receives." Well, who's it up to to give? It's up to God to give. "He who seeks, finds." Who's the one to reveal? It's God who reveals. Who's the one to open? It's God who opens.

So, do you see this hinge point in verse 10 in this section? It used to be in 5-9 about you and persistence and keep trying and don't give up because persistence when done according to God's passions and priorities will lead to His provision of grace, which was His and His alone to give.

I would just say, experientially, verse 10 is tricky, isn't it, if you've been in the faith a while? Why is it tricky? Because you can think of things you've asked for and didn't receive, things you've sought out and didn't find, and doors you've knocked on that weren't opened. You can think of those. You could think of really fickle ones, maybe that's easier.

My prayer from age 12 to 16 – and I was saved at 10 – was that I would be the next great Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback; that's where I grew up. I'm not trying to make enemies, Cowboys fans. You guys have us in the series 18 to 16, I checked. So, America's team, Steeler Nation; we could be friends, unless we play in the Super Bowl again, which we've won two to one – just side note. But you're winning the series.

But this came to my mind when I read verse 10. Okay, now we're at God's prerogative to give, open up, allow to be found, reveal. But what do we do when we've prayed for something for a long time and we haven't seen those responses? How do we make sense of this promise of a payoff in our persistence? And the only thing I could go back to is what we started with. I have to check in those things I've prayed for that I haven't received, I have to check them against the answer key, which is God's exaltation of His name, the expansion of His kingdom and the equipping of saints.

I mean, if there's something I've been praying for, can I lay it up against those three things and say, "This thing You haven't answered for a while, Lord, was it really about exalting Your name, or was there something I was trying to get out of it? Was it for the expansion of Your kingdom, or was I trying to build my own?" Even if it was paper machete over with Bible language, the Lord weighs our actions, He weighs our motives, He knows our hearts.

Proverbs 16 tells us that "many are plans in a man's heart, but it's the response of the Lord that determines it. A man's ways are pure in his own eyes, but God weighs the heart." And I think verse 10 makes me ask if I haven't seen the answer in my persistence, "Have I been passionate about God's priorities, praying in a way that I'm persisting for the things God is eager to answer, not persisting in priorities that aren't His?" because when God's priorities become our passions, we can pray persistently and wait patiently on Him. That's the only way I can. could get my mind around verse 10. I have to go back to the things I know that are true in verses 2-4.

The Parallel on Persistence

What's Jesus trying to do, though? Well, He's driving us to this last section in 11-13. It's a parallel about God as our Father. It's a parallel on persistence, because Jesus wants us to know who our Father is and what He's like, and so He switches over here.

I mean, just think about it for a moment. If anybody can give us the answer to, "What is God like? What is God the Father like?" it's going to be the Son. You've been seeing that already in Luke. As I was reviewing Luke this week, I was struck just in chapter 9 up until chapter 11, just a few of these statements. I'll bring them back to your memory to show you how much Jesus emphasized, "If you're going to know the Father, you have to know Him."

First, in His transfiguration, verse 35: "A voice came out of the clouds, saying, 'This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him.'" And then in Jesus' teaching on greatness in Luke 9:48, when He said, "Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me." Then in Luke 10:16, He's speaking judgment on Chorazin and Bethsaida: "And you, Capernaum, will you not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades. The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me."

You've been seeing week after week how Jesus is trying to say to the disciples and to the crowds, "I and the Father are one. And in everything you do with Me is what you're doing with Him. You can't divorce these two things. So listen, He sent Me; don't reject Me." And then look at Luke 10:22, "All things have been handed over to Me by My Father. And no one knows who the Son is except the Father and who the Father is except the Son and to anyone whom the Son wills to reveal Him."

I wanted to stop as we look at this last section and start into it talking about God as Father; and that's the parallel we need to know for the why behind our prayers, "Why do we pray?" Not just how persistently, not just what God's fame and name, but why? Because He's Father. But I wanted to remind you of a few of those things that you've already seen in Luke in case some of you are in here today and consider yourself a spiritual person that you pray and you wonder why your prayers aren't answered. It very well could be that you're not in Christ because you haven't come to the Father through the Son, the Son whom the Father said at the transfiguration, "This is My Son, the Anointed One, the Chosen One; listen to Him. And you need to receive Him in order to receive Me. You need to know Him in order to know Me." And so I would just offer you this morning, Christ, by asking you, "Do you know the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who came to reveal God the Father?" because I read a lot of the Pew Research surveys that come out.

I was reading The New York Times article last week that the headline was, "One Nation Under God." The New York Times writer was making the argument because of this new information from a Pew Research survey that, though, for the last 30 years they'd been surveying – there was less and less Christians in our country, they said it's plateaued in the last five years. "Praise God, we're a Christian nation again," right? It's plateaued at 60 percent; 60 percent of people still say they're Christian.

So I dug into the research. And if 60 percent are still Christian, if you went over to Herb's House today to get a coffee and ten random people are in there, hey, they would say, "Yeah, four of those ten people, they're not Christian," another religion entirely. You'd probably meet a Muslim and a Buddhist and a Hindu and a Jew.

But they would say, "Hey, Christianity's back in America,". Six of the ten would be." But then you break that down, and they include it in six of ten, three of those six could be a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, a Catholic, somebody who's Eastern Orthodox; and all four of those get either the person of Jesus wrong or the work of Jesus wrong. They either deny that He's the Son of God eternally begotten from the Father, or they deny that His work on the cross is sufficient alone.

So, why I want to stop here today is you may be a spiritual person and you may be one of those people who would have answered in the survey and said, "Sure, I believe in God. I pray." And maybe the thing I want to kind of loosen a few bolts in your thinking this morning is just making you think, "Why don't I ever see my prayers answered?" And I think the text, what we're about to see when we talk about knowing the Father through the Son in this last section, the parallel is that you have to come to the Father through the Son and the Son alone.

Conclusion

So, if you don't know Christ this morning who lived a perfect life, died a death on the cross so that you could be forgiven, there's only one prayer that you need to know this morning, and it comes in Luke 18. It might be the most important starting point in prayer that anybody could ever hear when Jesus tells them another parable, Luke 18:13, and He says, "There was a tax collector, standing a distance away, unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner.'"

And when you make that plea with God, saying, "I abandon ship on everything in my own life; there is nothing in me, it's all in Christ," the answer God can give you this morning would be what you see in verse 14: "I tell you, this man went to his house justified." If you're not in Christ this morning, you need justified before God. In the courtroom of a holy God, you need to be declared righteous by trusting alone in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And here is a beautiful thing as we move into 11-13. In our prayer lives, the reason we pray, why we don't give up, is because we move from the courtroom of our justification into the household of our adoption. That's 11-13. The parallel is God is now our Father who loves His children. And we don't come pleading and praying anymore in a courtroom for our justification. We have been justified. We have peace with God, Romans 5:1.

And if that weren't good enough just to be justified, how precious is the doctrine of our adoption, that we're the children of God. So you look at this section and it's really easy to understand 11-13; He just makes a parallel to being a good parent: "Suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he won't give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?" We wouldn't do this to our kids: "Dad, get me a Happy Meal?" "Sure, son." Opens it up, boom, western diamondback rattler, most poisonous snake in your parts, I've been told. No parent does that to their kid. Or, same thing: "He asks for an egg, you don't give him a scorpion."

What's the point of these lesser to greater arguments? That would be crazy. Again, comical, twisted comedy that a father would do that to his son. No, He wants to drive this point home in verse 13. Why we keep persisting in prayer is because "we, though evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will your heavenly Father give you?" And He goes beyond what Matthew says in his account in Matthew 7. He adds, "How much more will your Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"

There's a lot of questions. What does that mean, "He'll give the Holy Spirit"? Well, we know we get the Holy Spirit when we're born again. I mean, when you get Him, what gifts are left out is the question, because you might want to say, "What does that mean?" Whatever you know about what the Holy Spirit does in your life, that's what that means. The gifts come from the Giver of the gifts: the Holy Spirit. So you, believer, have been given the Holy Spirit. And so when you go to your Father again, to the household, not to the courtroom, you go into the place and you remember your adoption. You've been brought into His family by the Son, Ephesians 1:4 says, predestined to adoption in Christ; in love, actually, before that. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons.

So you go in there, and in one of the gifts, you would look around when you're praying and saying, "God, I need, I need strength." "Oh, you need strength?" "Yes, I need strength. How can I get strength? Can You just kind of give me strength?" Well, I'll give you the one who gives strength. Romans 8:26, this is how you get strength in prayer: "In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness."

What Paul is doing, picking up decades later writing in Romans 8:26 is rooted here in our verse. By giving you the Holy Spirit, and when you come to God in prayer, your Father, asking for help, and you need strength, He gave you the Helper, He gave you the Comforter, He gave you the Advocate, and so the Spirit can help you in your weakness. When you cry out for wisdom, James 1 says, "If you lack wisdom, pray for wisdom." He gives you who? The Spirit of truth.

You already have it. You've been given the Holy Spirit. So the things you're asking in prayer as a child of God, because our Father gives us the greatest gift, He gave us the greatest gift in His Son and our salvation, the greatest gift in the Holy Spirit, in dwelling in us, in our sanctification, to make us more like Christ. And so whenever the things we think we need, we ask for, He goes, "You have the gift. You have the Spirit."

But this gets us at the end here to the point of why we persist. It's because we're His children, and He's not leaving us shortchanged in any way. But we have to see Him as Father. We have to know His character as God. I remember hearing it once from John MacArthur, and I've probably heard it 100 times in interviews when they ask him about the endurance in ministry and the persistence and the not giving up, and he goes, "Everything goes back to this: my theology carries me." "How did you survive this thing? How did you get through that thing?" He would just say, "Our theology carries us. It's what we know and believe about God, His nature."

This whole passage on persistence, this is the end game of it. You don't persist for persistence's sake. What's the end game of that? Why? Because you know the character of God. He's a Father who loves you and sent His Son to die for you. And if He has given you that, how much more will He give with the Holy Spirit? So why you can keep praying.

J. I. Packer loved talking about the doctrine of adoption. And he wrote this; he said, "When we call God our Father, that's the Christian name for God. Our grasp of Christianity will not exceed our grasp of our adoption." Just chew on that maybe for the rest of the day, that you've been adopted in Christ.

Took my kids yesterday to the Institute for Creation Research around here, the Henry Morris Genesis exhibit; it was awesome. I have the 12, 10, and the 9 with me, and I thought, "This would be great. They need to know God as Creator." And from right when you walk in there, I mean, it just captivates you. You see the first video and the multi-screen thing of them just putting Genesis 1 to video. And I was just like, "God, this is amazing." And my kids are watching it, and I just thought, "God, how amazing You are in creation."

But then this morning He reminded me how much more amazing He is as in adoption. And I was helped by Thomas Watson, Puritan, who wrote this. This is the connection that God was kind to give to me even this morning. Thomas Watson wrote this: "It was much for God to take a clod of dust and make it into a star. How much more for God to take a clod of dirt and sin and adopt it as His heir." Let's pray.

[Prayer] Father, we thank You for the doctrine of adoption that it reminds us children even the hearing we have before you this morning how wonderful it is to be in Christ, where every blessing in the heavenly places is ours in Christ. And foremost in our hearts this morning, when we call on you our heavenly Father, is that You took us, a bunch of clods of sinful dirt, created in Your image, redeemed by Your Son, and being recreated in His image, and You have taken those sinful clods of dirt and called us sons and daughters. So remove any sense of our own importance; replace it with the precious promises we have here, that we are truly inadequate and helpless as that story told us, but in our inadequacy and in our need, we see You who has everything we need. And so we thank You for that this morning, Father. It's in Your Son's name we pray. Amen.